The Art of Being Uncomfortable

Reading Active Aesthetics: Contemporary Australian Poetry

抄録

Australia, with its history and peculiar and fragile ecosystem, o ers a model case on how globalisation has been a ecting local environments. Unlike the United States, the nation has never been fully comfortable with its relation to natural elements, at least since the rst European settlement in the late 18th century. Australian literature has re ected such uneasiness and produced writers like Henry Lawson, Patrick White, and A.D. Hope, who all depict the nature of the southern continent as grotesque and hostile to their sensibilities. In recent years, as Aboriginal culture has gained popularity and global environmentalism has taken root, Australia, in its o cial self-presentation, seems to have overcome the issue, attracting tourists to the abundant environmental experiences it claims to o er. However, reading contemporary Australian poetry shows otherwise as uneasiness is still strongly felt in the Australian psyche. Whether dealing with the suburban landscape or so-called pristine nature, poets tend to confess how Australian environments and contemporary ways of life disrupt each other. My paper focuses on a recent anthology of Australian poetry, Active Aesthetics: Contemporary Australian Poetry (2016), and analyses this uneasiness as it surfaces in several works, arguing that it appropriately re ects the inevitable impacts of globalisation on the Australian ecosystem.